ISSN: 0975-1815
Mirror from the Indus – Essays, Tributes and Memoirs | Nibir K Ghosh |Authors Press | Jan 2020 | ISBN: 978-93-90155-24-8 | ASIN: B08CS16V1G | Hardcover | pp 208 | Rs. 795
Seema
Sinha
Materialism leads us
to lose awareness of our inner life, which is bad enough; but to be hypnotized
by our own feelings and sensations and forget about the others and the world around
us is worse. – The Upanishads
These immortal words quoted by Dr Nibir Ghosh in his book titled Mirror
from the Indus – Essays, Tributes and Memoirs, summarize the spirit of
India, which revolves around inclusion, altruism and the concept of
‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’. So does his 208 pages volume, which showcases the best
minds that India has produced so far – Gandhi, Aurobindo, Tagore, Subhas
Chandra Bose and Mother Teresa. Yes, we do have a right to claim the mother for
ourselves, though she was born elsewhere. Her selfless love for the orphans and
the destitute, much before social media made it fashionable, is visible in the
chapter titled ‘The Language of Caring is Universal’ in Mirror from the
Indus, where Ghosh refers to his meeting with the legend. Her advice
to the young men who had gone to meet her was that they should make ‘mistakes
in kindness’, because only those with a ‘Nirmal Hridaya’ could get to see God
in the poor and the downtrodden. According to Mother Teresa, her Nobel Prize
was for the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the
lepers and all those who were shunned by everyone for one reason or the other.
If that is not divine, what else is, asks Ghosh, as he came back humbled by her
humility, which left an everlasting impression on his heart.
When the world had slipped into an ‘abyss of violence, cruelty and
chaos’ came a Gandhi, to show the real meaning of love. ‘Truth’ for Gandhi was
never a matter of jest, says Ghosh. In fact, a man of truth was also a man of
care – one had to be careful of one’s own mistakes as also those of the others,
as the example of Gandhi’s gym-instructor, Mr Gimi showed. Of the seven social
sins that Gandhi abhorred and resolved to keep away from, not one would make a
dent today as society moves on from being moral to material. ‘Wealth without
work’ is a dream come true today, ‘politics without principals’ a reality. ‘So
is Gandhi relevant?’ asks Ghosh, and who should answer him, but Gandhi himself:
“I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights, or should I go back
to India? I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer
hardships in the process.” The slide downhill must be arrested, says Ghosh, and
that can be done only if the Mahatma is read. The author quotes Martin Luther
King who emphatically says that if humanity is to progress, Gandhi is
inescapable, nay, inevitable.
If Gandhi believed in non-violence, Aurobindo, says Ghosh, wanted his
nation to be ‘masculine, bold and ardent’ in its spirit. Nationalism for
Aurobindo was a religion, where the priest had to give his all to the
Motherland. India for him was the fallen mother whose blood was being sucked by
a vampire, and noting but blood was to be drawn in return of this heinous
crime. Ghosh refers to the creed of ‘Spiritual Nationalism’ that Aurobindo
preached and practiced, where ‘Vande Mataram’ was not just a slogan, but a
pledge, a call and a Mantra.
From the city of Taj, Ghosh raises the toast to love, in the guise of Tagore’s
immortal lines dedicated to the ‘Lover’s Gift’ –The Taj Mahal : “As empires
crumble to dust and centuries are lost in shadows, the marble sighs to the
stars, ‘I remember’!” The words came from the ‘elusive land of the spirit’, and
told us that ‘a citadel of endurance could be built on a foundation of
anguish’, says Aung San Suu Kyi in a letter to her fellow Nobel Laureates from
page 18 of Ghosh’s precious book. Speaking of the assertiveness of the eternal
womanhood as envisaged by Tagore, Ghosh compares Nora from Ibsen’s A
Doll’s House and Mrinal in Tagore’s ‘The Wife’s Letter’, identifying
the latter a fire-brand and a revolutionary. The author finds this modern colossus
taking great strides towards an inclusive society. In his own words, “For this
conflict-ridden world that often seems to be on the precipice of an imminent
clash of civilizations, the idea of multiculturalism that Tagore envisaged
years ago ought to serve as a valuable road map to the future of mankind.”
Yet another son that Mother India is proud of is Subhas, who, says
Ghosh, was a ‘dynamo of divine electricity’, a radical who sought blood for
freedom. India was his first and only love, and he chucked the ‘rotten’ Indian
Civil Service to invest himself in the service of the motherland. If Subhas
would have lived, says Ghosh, India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ may have been
spectacularly in resonance with Tagore’s ‘Heaven of Freedom’.
Mirror from the Indus also sings of the greatness of
Subramanya Bharati, the great ‘Bard of freedom’, who exhorted his countrymen to
forsake self-interest and cowardly indifference. In keeping with the spirit of
inclusion, Ghosh’s book reveals the insightful writings of Rudyard Kipling,
Edmund Burke, Somerset Maugham, W. H. Auden, Byron and others, who have raised
the humanistic concerns in literature. If the author introduces us to Bedi’s
‘Lajwanti’ on page No. 115, he allows us to bid goodbye to Saros Cowasjee’e
‘Elsa’ on page 123. We have Nissim Ezekiel measuring the ‘Matrix of Indianness’
on one hand, and Girish Karnad reading ‘History in Future Sense’ on the other.
The icing on the cake is an entire chapter devoted to women, with authors like
Doris Lessing, Erica Jong, Pratibha Ray, Anees Jung and others storming out of
its pages, bringing down the citadel of discrimination and injustice.
I recommend Mirror from the Indus – Essays, Tributes and
Memoirs by Dr Nibir K. Ghosh to all those who cherish a love for
words. Good literature is like good wine – it matures with age and is best
served cold. These essays of Dr Ghosh have been compiled to introduce the new
generation to the great minds of India. They also render the difficult task of
challenging the mindless materialism of the times, which has not come to an end
despite Corona. Some things die hard, and yet we must not give up trying. Mirror
from the Indus is a timely reminder of the same.
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh has been interviewed by Robin Lindley on History News
Network. The interview may be accessed on https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/154408.
Dr. Seema Sinha has been a Doctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan. She is an M. Phil. in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a UGC Fellow. She is interested in an alternative reading of Indic Myths.
♣♣♣END♣♣♣
Courtesy,
Muse India Issue 95 (Jan-Feb 2021)
https://museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=book%20review(s)&issid=95&menuid=9300
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